Spike Lee’s Kickstarter for The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint (here’s hoping he announces a real title soon and I can stop typing out all that word salad) ended just a few hours ago, more than $150,00 over its $1.25m goal. But even before the Kickstarter ended, Lee was hard at work assembling a cast for his crowd-funded feature. First came Stephen Tyrone Williams, a stage actor with a handful of film credits to his name (Children of God, Restless City), but a few hours later came a far more famous Williams. Michael K. Williams of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire has joined the film too.
This casting alone guarantees that hordes of obsessive Wire fans will turn up to see Lee’s latest joint, which will be a love story about “human beings who are addicted to blood.” Williams (Michael K., that is) will not be playing the lead- that role will go to the other Williams (Stephen Tyrone), with Zaraah Abrahams as the female lead. But lead role or not, any mention of The Wire’s Williams is enough to put plenty of butts (mine included) in seats.
And with The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint being touted as a love story, it’ll be worth paying attention to see if Williams (again, Michael K.) gets the opportunity to do any romancing. Ever since The Wire, he’s been consistently typecast as endless variations of Omar Little. Perhaps The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint will allow the actor to break the mold he’s been cast in.
Either way, it’s worth checking out Lee’s Kickstarter page and his announcement of Williams’ casting. The former is an endless source of updates about the film, the latter proves that even a visionary filmmaker can still type like a crazy person and capitalize every word in an entire paragraph.
Related Topics: Kickstarter
